Manchester Artist's Book fair

A grumpy start evolved into a sunny finish at the Manchester Artists Book Fair this last Saturday.  I had taken along a small edition of my 'Journey to the End of the World' book.  Small but beautiful, it failed to get any sales, and I had a horrible sense of deja vu - a feeling of being stuck in that tricky place between producing stuff that is genuinely creative and making sure it's affordable.  Of course it may have been that the work was rubbish, and that was why it didn't sell.  What I mean is that sense that it's almost impossible to get hand-made work to pay in a society educated to mass production.  Let's take it as read that the work is desirable!  But then I got a chance to walk around the fair, and my, what a delight.  The book form might be hard to sell, but it's conceptually strong, and it covers all bases from the notebook to the political pamphlet and everything between.  I particularly appreciated Emily Speed's work (hers is the drawing shown, from a project at Project Space Leeds called Drawing Shed - click on the link to see an animation of the project).  I bought two of her books, one an Architectural Alphabet, and the other an 'exploration of spaces inbetween'.  I also loved 'The Ghost in the Fog' by Caseroom Press, a small book of only the corrections to a translation of a Finish Poetry book.  A poetry book in itself. So, a decent end to the day.

Jump to Victoria Scholes' website